I got into this game via a demo. The demo left me wanting more, and Steam had it on sale, so off I went to get it.

I'm on my second play through. The first play through was messed up beyond believe. I didn't know what was what and got stuck in a boss battle that I could not win. That bit frustrated me to no end and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ me off greatly. I went off in search for a guide to overcome the boss battle. To my dismay, none of the guide helps as I've done something I should not have done: killing everything in sight and trying to spread the EXP love with all my party members. The end result was a severly gimped party lacking in both stats and skills.

I stopped playing for a couple of days and dived deep into the wiki. I learn the proper way to play the game, picked up a majority of the content that I just zipped past without realizing it, and focused on growing my party members the proper way. Second time around, the game was infinitely less infuriating and way more fun. The boss that I was stuck at in my first play through became a breeze, though the game did something rather nasty after that particular fight. Thank god I was somewhat prepared for it, equipped with both knowledge and power to overcome that nasty bit. The resulting satisfaction was very, very high.

From then on, the game became something I want to explore in depth. I trawled through the wiki and its discussion pages to learn more about the mechanics of the game. Although I've been vigilant in keeping track of the missable content, there are still a number of things that I inadvertently got locked out of without realizing it. I am currently one boss fight away from the end of the game and already I am laying down the foundation for my new game plus.

Despite the amazing depth of the game, or rather, due to it, the game will eat you alive if you don't know what you’re doing. The game does not make obvious certain crucial information from the get go. Playing the game with a lack of information can lead to a really bad experience, especially if you play this game the way you would a normal RPG.

With that said, the game is excellent for those wanting a good challenge. There is a vast amount of content within the game, and it should keep someone busy for the next 100-200 hours.

Update (22 Feb 2014): I've just finished my third playthrough and I'm taking a break to plan for my fourth playthrough. It seems that once you've finished the game once, you just keep going back for more. This game is one of my best investments in Steam.

362 of 377 people (96%) found this review helpful1 person found this review funny

Recommended

93.8 hrs on record

Posted: October 14, 2014

The Last Remnant is my favorite JRPG of all time, and definitely holds a place of my top 10 games of all time. Here's why.

This game is wholly unique. Usually, when one says "JRPG", you have a good sense of what you're getting into. Cliched characters (whether you like those cliches or not), quirky personalities, a turn-based battle system, a long convoluted story with plenty of twists, and be prepared to roll your eyes or shake your fist at the screen for some character antics or story twists you saw coming from early on. In The Last Remnant, little of this is true. The story is unique, the art style and characters are unique, some of the twists and story archs are surprising, and the battle system is so unlike anything else you've ever played, somewhere between a JRPG and a large scale strategy game with army simulation elements.

This game is known to be quite challenging. I bought the Xbox 360 version on the game's release date, and have beat the game a few times and put a couple hundred hours into it. After completing my first PC playthrough tonight after about 90 hours, I can say for certain the PC version is about 3000% easier. An update was made to the game that made a few changes that made the PC version exponentially easier, though it is still more challenging than the average RPG. So if you happened to try the 360 version and were turned off by its difficulty, I urge you to try the PC version.

The Last Remnant needs to be commended for its ability to have realistic and relatable characters, and multiple characters you care about and will remember forever. In this game, you are able to literally build up a small army to take into battles with you, where enemies and your people are separated into "unions" rather than each person being separate from one another. It is here where the game brings in large-scale strategy type battles, allowing the unions to act as one unit. Strategy fans will delight in the ability to hire soldiers and characters for their army, picking and choosing people based on their unique skill sets and abilities. You are able to hire people you've perhaps done quests with, or people you've never met that happen to have a skill you've never heard of, just because you want to see it in action. You then pick and choose which people to put with whom, how to set up your unions, etc., giving limitless possibilities for your army. Also, your followers will often ask for certain items, ingredients, etc. throughout the game, which they'll use to upgrade their equipment and become even more badass. (And trust me, this game is full of badass characters.) You can also dictate how your soldiers level up, as they ask you from time to time if you want them to delve into a different skill set or art style.

Even if the game had a terrible story and cliched characters, the battle system would keep me crawling back. Battles are by far the best part of this game. While some will say that some boss battles can be "cheap" or "unfair," I'd argue that your characters also unlock plenty of abilities and special moves that are just as if not more cheap or unfair to the enemy (Blackout is ridiculously powerful, for example, and that's a move my unions ended up using frequently). In summary, fights can be nail-biting, because you are constantly reminded that you are fighting enemies that are just as skilled and able as you. Will you still scream at the game in frustration? Sometimes, yes. But I've personally also nearly broken things with excitement when a single decision or a stroke of luck turned the tide of battle. Also, I'll let it be known that I find games that are hard just to BE hard quite annoying and to be little to no fun. This is not a game that is consistently cheap or unfair. It can be extremely challenging, and you'll call BS on a fight from time to time, but with strategy, that same fight on your next try could be immensely rewarding and much simpler.

The Last Remnant is a refreshing game in a genre that is usually predictable. It has a gritty realism that is usually reserved for western RPGs. It also respects its characters. You'll find no little girls with parasols fighting in battle, nor will you have a guy insist on being shirtless while on the battlefield (seriously...whenever I see that, I think about how easy it'd be to take them out). The characters--while they can be quirky and humorous at times--are never walking cliches. Each woman or man has her or his own personality, back story, goals and motivations--and YOU get to decide whether or not to add them to your army and help them grow over time.

This game is a true gem. It is nothing less than a crime that a game of such originality is not mentioned in conversations of JRPGs more often. This is the JRPG that I hold every other JRPG up to--and until we get another game in this universe, I see no other game coming close. I cannot recommend this game enough.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

The Last Remnant is a great role-playing game with a unique take on the combat mechanics in form of a turn-based, command-based system using symbol encounters. It is definitely the most interesting part of this game providing a lot of fun especially in the larger-scale battles.

Originally released for Xbox 360 the PC version of this game features numerous changes from the console, including enhanced graphical settings, a Turbo Mode that increases battle speed (very practical when farming for weapon components), and a New Game Plus option, that allows the player to start a new game with the gold and unique items from their first play-through. And for the hardcore gamers among us there are of course challenges like super boss battles and the component farming for the endgame weapons.

On the other hand the sound is a mixed bag of partially epic orchestral music and sorely limited voice-acting. In addition the protagonist Rush is sometimes a little bit uninspiring as a leader figure.

Fun fact: The battle system of The Last Remnant is originally drawn from Romancing SaGa but refined to a wholly new level.--

My rating system consists of six categories in descending order of importance:

It's a very deep game, and unfortunately it requires you to plan ahead and optimize. For your first playthrough go nuts, on the second playthrough look up some strategies :].

I hate it when people give reviews and they've only played a few hours, so I figured I should leave my opinion.

There's no grinding in this game, although there's a LOT of content for you to miss. Don't be in a hurry on this one, but also don't try to be meticulous and look up everything on your first playthrough. Enjoy the cheesy Rush cinematics! And then familiarize yourself with everything you missed on the first playthrough and make your second one badass!

84 of 90 people (93%) found this review helpful1 person found this review funny

Recommended

53.1 hrs on record

Posted: November 1, 2014

I originally started this game on the 360 but never was able to finish it, partially because of the ridiculously skewed leveling system and partially due to a red ring of death. Despite my inability to get past a boss fight around 80 percent of the way through the game, I really enjoyed it, so I was glad to see this game on Steam.

I was even more glad when I started to play TLR again and realized a couple of things: it's a lot easier if you understand the skewed leveling system (and I'll get to that in a second) and the PC version has made a lot of interesting quality of life improvements to the game. Really, it feels like the only thing missing from the PC version is... achievements. (Okay, actually, my other complaint would be that whomever did the cutscene animation has apparently never watched a living person walk before because the modeling is terrible but -- that's minor.)

So back to the leveling system. TLR is really interesting in that it removes all control from the player in terms of leveling characters and, to a certain extent, control over a character's actions in battle. So while the lack of control will take some getting used to I actually think the battle system is really fun, if unique. The leveling system, however, causes problems. Essentially TLR has two leveling stats: individual units/character stats (which the game auto-levels/assigns for you) and battle rank, which levels your entire party/army. What I didn't realize the first time I tried the game on the 360 was that having a high battle rank is... actually really bad. The higher the battle rank, the longer it takes for stat increases and the harder the enemies are to beat (to the point where if you have too high a rank, like I did, a boss battle literally becomes a one-shot and completely impossible encounter). So, I'm definitely having a much better play-through on the PC because (a) the PC version seems to have reduced some of the connection between battle rank and difficulty and (b) despite how counter-intuitive it is to NOT level in a RPG, I've managed to keep my battle rank pretty low.

That said, the game has an interesting storyline (that I'm eager to finally finish) and is definitely a completionist's nightmare. The main questline is actually fairly short but there's a MILLION sidequests and a couple hundred challenge quests (e.g., kill a specific monter, find a particular item, gain a specific level, etc.) so there's a ton of stuff to do.

If you have a good 40-50 hours to kill, you like the idea of transhumanism, and you like SquareEnix, or just JRPGs, I definitely recommend this one.

365 of 517 people (71%) found this review helpful12 people found this review funny

Not Recommended

13.9 hrs on record

Posted: December 23, 2014

I personally would not recommend this game because of it's "leveling" system. First all, I should note that I don't mind grinding and I hate JRPG's that have the moster's scale to your level, I hate being confined to how strong the developers think I should be at any given point in the game.Needless to say this game has the enemies scale to your level but then goes a step farther to make it even worse with it it's "battle rank" (BR) system. The game increases the stats of enemies and decreases the xp received and the chance to increase one of your characters stats. This wouldn't be so bad but the BR sticks no matter who is in your group (or union or whatever they want to call it) so if you level up your main character and the first couple party members in the early part of the game then every party member you get later will be ridicilously weak with no real way to level them up to where they should be.Honestly, google "the right way to level up" (skipping the fact a game shouldn't need an explanation of how to freaking level up) with The Last Remnant and they will all say to "avoid as many fights as possible". I do not want to play a game where the point of the game is to not play the game as much as possible.

The Last Remnant is the best 3D turn based RPG to hit the PC for ages. The union system allows you to control groups of characters by issuing a single command and while it might seem simplistic, the way you arrange your groups and what abilities you select for each character to use in combat makes it much more interesting, and the way your characters evolution isn't directly decided by the player, but rather managed by what you do makes it very immersive. As the player, you will need to pay attention to what a character's actions are in order for them to become stronger. Also the boss fights can resemble alot what an MMORPG boss fight is like, as you should assemble specific groups of characters, such as a group of healers and a tanking group, and getting the right characters to fill in these roles isn't as simple as to pick them up in a store, the player needs to develop the characters in a specific way if they are to become a specific member of the group, as you can't just put anyone doing anything.The story is interesting enough to keep you going, having it's ups and downs, and the side quests are a nice break and chance to make your characters stronger.The letdowns are how the item gathering system works, as it isn't always clear where you can get the items you need to craft or upgrade your characters, but a great wiki is present at http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Remnant_Wiki_-_The_Last_Remnant_Guide which has all the information you will need to help you with this. The main character is simple minded, childish and might not be your prefered one, but he's flexible enough to become strong in anything, so you'll find him useful.This being said, the game is a great chance for people who have been wanting a deep and fun turn based RPG, specially on the PC who hasn't had anything like this in a long time.

If it's caught your eye, but you're on the fence about The Last Remnant, then you already love JRPGs; as such, I'll make your decision easy for you: Go hit Add to Cart, and kiss several hours goodbye.

As you could probably tell from the videos as well as other reviews, the core of The Last Remnant is a fairly traditional JRPG, though it has a pretty unconventional take on battle and party mechanics. In reality, your success in battle will *largely* depend on what strategies you embrace, and those decisions start well before the battle screen ever initiates. Your Party is made up of all the characters you've picked up or hired, which you then organize into battle groups called Unions. During a fight, each Union is given a set of pseudo-random commands, and you select one of those options for the Union to perform (see the third-from-last screenshot on the store page).

While at first, this system feels like a complete roll of the dice, as you get a few battles under your belt and start developing your characters, there is actually quite a bit you can do to help create conditions that give you favorable battle commands. Moreso, there are actually a number of different schemes you can play with for Union organization. For sake of example, I've had equal success with having one healer in each of my Unions, as well as having a dedicated Union that serves as an all-around party heal/buff squad, backed up with a couple long-range attackers. In fact, range also plays a pretty important role in combat; units can be intercepted en-route to their intended target, granting a damage bonus to the intervening enemy squad.

Graphics are suprisingly top-notch for a game released back in '09. The spell and particle effects have aged well, and in a *shocking* twist, seem to have been ported favorably from the console version. The controls, however, didn't have as much attention paid to them. Check out warutaru's review for some crucially helpful steps in making the controls more PC-friendly!

All things considered, I have had an absolute blast playing TLR, especially for the mere ten bucks I dropped on it. I can honestly say it's one of the most pleasantly surprising games I've bought in a long, long time!

To begin with, this is a game I would recommend for gamers who love their RPGs, or hardcore gamers - not something for a casual gamer as it's main flaw is that it is linear in story, but there is alot left unexplained and it involves a lot of revisiting of places and searching for secrets areas, especially for those wanting for a 100% completion and/or to do all the quests and find all the secret dungeons and bosses etc.

That aside, the game is superb for playability and uses a new battle system where as instead of having total control of a group of characters, you get minimal control of battilions of characters. Allowing for variation in builds and tactics to how you make your way through the game, and allows for multiple playthroughs to be be varied each time. The graphics also are quite nice, especially the backgrounds to the maps and battle areas - though their are graphical issues with this game for frame loss during cutscenes and loading problems with textures that cannot solely be blamed on the developers as it is a fundemental problem with the Unreal Engine, to which I persoanlly try to overlook as this game has a lot to offer and is seemingly massive for a 1 hit wonder J-RPG.

That amount of detail for the missions and interactions of characters and NPC shows that everyone has a story to tell, which gives you details on history and lore with-in the game and helps you get involved and empathise with your characters, as there are quite a lot of recurring main characters that are not involved with the main story and the game attempts to get you to interact and branch out from the main story.

There is ALOT to do in this game. The story itself is around 60hours of gameplay, but for additional dungeons, quests, sidequests, hidden quests, hidden dungeons and bosses and the DLC (which is intergrated into the standard copy of the P.C. version of this game.) will easily double your time of playing this game and is overly rewarding... though I will admit, doing all that without the help of a walkthrough or a fanpage will be close to impossible without revisiting and searching out every last detail and mission a dozen times efore advancing the main story which is a blessing to those who enjoy grinding and admiring a games detail, but a living hell for completionists who want to do everything this game has to offer but without wasting their lives away.

Lastly, the music for this game is beautiful - as to be expected. I cannot comment much because there's not a lot to comment about except that it's nice, it fits the illusion of helping you become emerged in the game and is just perfect for the game in general.

My overall view of this game is a 7/10 - it's a good attempt at something new, but it fails due to being a port from the console, the fact the Unreal Engine was used (I have no idea why Square Enix wanted to use it, but they learnt the error of their ways.) which is the reason for the graphical problems - but nonetheless, they did well to create a game with a story you can emerge yourself into - though, I will state a warning to those without patiences or are new/casual RPG players - the battle system is difficult and overly confusing, even with instructions, it will take a while before you understand it entirely, and keep your ear out to every little detail thrown at you...it will give clues where to advance on the main story, or where to look for side quests/dungeons.